ÂŠ2013 j/j hastain
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be
reproduced without the express written permission of
the author, except in the case of written reviews.
ISBN 978-1-929878-40-6
First edition

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San Pedro, CA 90733
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Printed in the United States of America

j/j hastain transcends experiment poetry, transcends
experimental words and concepts, and transcends
beyond sexual identity into transference into something
more. j/j writes for the voiceless, giving them a voice,
finding “the courage to enter/ the next body”. There
are many posers out there pretending to be outrageous;
j/j is the real deal. j/j explores identity and wow, does
it matter! It matters when identity gets blurred in the
world, where so many do not know who they are, and
sex and gender are easy to unintentionally slip out of,
like undressing skin. As j/j says, “what imprisons is the
idea/ of space” and j/j is a poet obsessed with space and
line breaks. For what breaks us more than the negative
space around us; or, the space of silence?
—Martin Willitts Jr
One of poetry’s most bedeviling challenges is to render
the ineffable into language. The bolder poets face the
difficulty of not only writing about complex subjects but
of writing about those liminal spaces in topics where
language does not yet exist. j/j hastain has succeeded
here as few yet have in being able to give voice to
the unfolding/enfolding complexities of gender and
identity. The poems in her stretch from a purely lyrical
explication of a personal situation to the breathless
urgency of an unfolding manifesto. I am reminded
in this work of the powerful and shocking music of
Monique Wittig’s Les Guerilleres. Although hastain’s
aims are large, they do not go unfulfilled. This is a book
that should serve as a baseline for poetry that attempts
to bridge identity’s great divides.
—Eloise Klein Healy

“if you summon it by the right word,
by its right name,
it will come.”
—Kafka

When I was on the boat and pulling up the net
that had been laid out into the dark tides in order to
catch-- what I pulled up was a large mahogany chest. In
this chest were swatches and various chunks. It took me
a while before I recognized that these were my very own
memories. Some of the memories did not exist like solid
entities (a pocket watch, a chess set or even a prism) but
more like fog. This made it remarkable for me to try
and work with confession and articulation as I ate the
contents of the mahogany chest, in order to attempt to
speak my memories from or by way of new integrations.
This is the work of trying to speak the painful events,
after active re-contextualizations.
This practice of eating the memories then
extracting ways of saying from that act was so much like
working with a moving target or a set of moving targets.
Nothing in this book is fictionalized or embellished.
These are my memories of the events and what exists
beyond them. For me this book is where confession
meets hope; a literal, organic bridge made from my own
re-contextualized flesh.
I would say that the book is at least somewhat
about the abuse/events of my young body moving
into the world, but it is also more than that, about the
ways that collaboration and binding with the lover are
restorative (regarding past traumas). It gives me hope
to say that some very painful emotions are real and
present here, but so is the joy, the reaching, the need,
the wild sensations and the healing.
Oh to have written it through me, to have composed
and in that composition moved the data from presence
as pain in my DNA, into body and self as power.

her

— her • j/j hastain —

looking into rogue
aspects
for unforeseen
nutrients

for courage to enter
the next body

oh inversions
odes and letters
amidst so many
instances of isolated

—2—

— her • j/j hastain —

I choose to proceed
from within
after having finally learned to fray
pink

—3—

— her • j/j hastain —

byways and bisections
when I was a child the neighbor boy held
my head there and forced me to lick
but more shocking than that
was the way my father
turned his head to avoid

what was he afraid he might see?

later that day
I slipped under the yellow
booth
both
hiding and hidden from
which to me was one of the first
meanings
of and for
alone

—4—

— her • j/j hastain —

baptism was required
in order for me to ever become
woman
woman
which would mean a hurting
unless I broke the name
and the category
woman
which would mean Anne Sexton’s
sorrow
the decaying birds of paradise
on the chipped armoire
woman
which would mean
always limited
soma
and so many core colors
lost to
patriarchal
disguises

—5—

— her • j/j hastain —

as I developed
I felt
like a reoccurring dream

—6—

— her • j/j hastain —

that night I was babysitting my brother
and I could feel
someone watching me
through the white framed window
why were there no blinds or curtains?
I wished then
on blue giant stars
tried to deepen
to turn invisibility into
something more safe
I clung
desperately to a fork
because the knives were all dirty
I gripped
fiercely
in the only place in the house
that could not be viewed by
an open frame

—7—

— her • j/j hastain —

I hoped then
I hoped for
a hero
and I did so by way of
the image
of multiple
hybrid-wolves
whorled together
a conglomerate
is always
a ringlet

—8—

— her • j/j hastain —
I used to tread carefully
toward the garage
where my father was working with
stained glass
I made sure he could not
hear me
sometimes I would sit
against the outside of the garage
to be close to
him
and oh the blaring
light
that was coming off
of the pieces
as he was soldering
when stained glass
compositions are being made
for the sake of
something stunning
to place inside of
what otherwise would only be
a gap
glass must be scored
glass must be broken
—9—

— her • j/j hastain —

that so often
what came from
the alchemical work
of heat and glass
were windows
of women with curvaceous
forms
women who were also
treading
but who tread
who sweat
in teal
pants

—10—

— her • j/j hastain —

space is not fixed
therefore it cannot imprison
what imprisons is the idea
of space
is how that idea
is carried
out
in
bodies

—11—

— her • j/j hastain —

walking near the river that afternoon
I looked
for a specific red branch
for the sake of
something in similitude
to sexual or seed
for the sake of
something
semi-permeable
for the sake of
something to replace
how daunting
space
had begun to feel

—12—

— her • j/j hastain —

my words exist
between yours
modern
emphasis relative to
such necessary migrations
still unraveling what is unbearably
accumulated
memory
history
locks
but doing so
while also trying
to leave the wind
loose

—13—

— her • j/j hastain —

as a child I pulled that heavy red wagon
it heaved
with surplus
of vegetables and bread
and the sky changed as I pulled
and I sensed
anodyne
relief
because darkness
appeared so gradually then
was so much less abrupt
than the distance
of what midnight
felt like
as I gazed for so many hours
into it
out of the window
in my bedroom

—14—

— her • j/j hastain —

I believe it is possible to turn
the shattered shards
into rubies
to stitch a next
body
like birds constitute their nests
and this is that
effort
occurring

—15—

— her • j/j hastain —

there is no more specific
belonging
than the experience
of a human orgasm
in that next body
once it has been stitched
no more specific
belonging
than fantasies
of a tongue
being painted
by shared emissions

—16—

— her • j/j hastain —

by sing-reminiscence
to find
upcoming
her
in the blackening binds of a Federico Garcia Lorca
translation
her
that would eventually be
both she and I

—17—

— her • j/j hastain —

soon there would be
an authentic vibrato
that could be
mutual
a sweet authenticity
in replacement of
all past-tense
bravado

—18—

— her • j/j hastain —

as I walked past them
I noticed that all of the tulips
had lost their petals
in the storm
the night before
and I dragged my indulgent
fingers
over the erect stems
to feel something substantive
in the petals’ place

—19—

— her • j/j hastain —

learning to meter
the longing
to postulate
taverns
having searched in many lakes
for the variable face
of the lover
for the slight sight
of a figure
so curved
that you would be
liquid
and so hard
that you could forever
fill me
fulfill

—20—

— her • j/j hastain —

before anew
before being born again
I wanted to expose
this desire for a norm of wetness
or metal becoming
mulch
all of this aching
for a new
gravity
for something that would pull me
at the same time that it made me
pool

—21—

— her • j/j hastain —

I remember lying on my back
small body beneath
three
large sunflowers
how I committed to myself
to stay there
with the worms
until the seeds of those large flower heads
began to shed
themselves
until I could feel
the shock
of them shucking

—22—

— her • j/j hastain —

impressions
being made
in graphite
on abandoned city streets
how so many of the images
of the hunger
are
also tones

—23—

— her • j/j hastain —

bringing the internal water
to the external water
by wading
then submerging
in a thing like memory
is so cold
that it makes the sensation of heat

—24—

— her • j/j hastain —

“touch me here”
and what you will feel as you touch my
skin
will be different than what I will have felt
of that
feeling

—25—

— her • j/j hastain —

the need
was like molecular
burning
lemons
buffing
my very actual sores
“don’t take the light away
please never take the light away”
sipping fingertips
until something
shiny
right there
at the flesh’s merging

—26—

— her • j/j hastain —

molten
pores the color
of contusion
which is progress from
cores the color of
confusion

—27—

— her • j/j hastain —
I knelt in that field
behind
the barn
but in front of
so many jars
of dead
bee carcasses
I collected them
so they would not be forgotten
I kept them
in water
then I shook them
so I could see their wings
become dislodged
and as I did so I sucked citrus
as something you
just can’t savor
imagining
what it might mean
if I could somehow be
a temporary
savior
their temporary
savior
—28—

— her • j/j hastain —

I was always
waiting to bathe
in hopes of being subsumed
in something else
in order to be forced
to learn
to breathe
differently

—29—

— her • j/j hastain —

embodiment of the noiseless parts
looking
at the feet of a manikin
trying
to find innovative ways
of coming
clean
to you
to our future

—30—

— her • j/j hastain —

I felt the city
unfolding
irritating the lines
and this moved me
again and again
from rational
to sensory
relevance

—31—

— her • j/j hastain —

marking by fruit
fruit as a verb
fruiting
attempts
to score
the intensities
of an effeminate
vortex
of an erudite
druid

—32—

— her • j/j hastain —

oh these words
that must be woven
because the body is
an undulating
source-skull
being culled

—33—

— her • j/j hastain —

as a teenager
I swam in the river
lobbing toward
abandoned logs
then suddenly I was
surrounded by chunky
red
how that moment began
me
menstrual
meaning bloody
verdures
of bold

—34—

— her • j/j hastain —

j/j hastain
is a mystic, seer, lover,
priest/ess, and writer.
As artist and activist
of the audible, j/j is the
author of several crossgenre books. j/j’s recent
writing has appeared in
Caketrain, Trickhouse,
The Collagist, Housefire,
Bombay Gin, Aufgabe
and Tarpaulin Sky.
j/j has been a guest
lecturer at Naropa
University, University of
Colorado and University
of Denver.

—35—

The first time I read j/j hastain’s “her,” my response was the word “Gloria.” I then put
the book of poems away to think about why this word had been my reaction. It came
to me that this long poem is really a ground breaking spiritual manifesto based on the
reactions of a female body’s childhood sexual experience and ends in the transformative
power of poetry to evolve sex to what is sublime—beyond gender, yet embodied in the
“her-ness” that is peeled away, petal by petal, as the tulips in the poem.
Not only is this ground breaking in the philosophical, spiritual sense but also notably
in j/j’s poetical form. j/j’s words are chosen unerringly to be links to the nurturing,
sensual and creative aspects; j/j’s spaces command attention to the whole of word and
space until a luminous anamorphic beauty looms at once dominant and fragile.”
—Carole Towers